Month: September 2017

What do you do when you desperately want a Saab 9-5NG SportCombi, but there aren’t any around to buy? You build one yourself! It took two Saab enthusiasts and a small support team nearly two years to get from a crazy idea to the presentation of their “Griffin”.

I visit Philip, one of the owners to car 9000022, that this day will undergo the registration inspection here in Sweden. The car had been at Autohaus Lafrenz in Kiel to be approved by German TüV. All papers have been submitted to the Swedish authorities. Now there is only one last obstacle left before the number of road-legal SportCombis in Sweden will increase from 4 to 5.

Arguably one of the most beautiful Saab models ever made, the Saab 9-5 “New Generation” was introduced at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September 2009 and during the two eventful years that followed, a total of 11,320 production 9-5s rolled off the assembly lines in Trollhättan, Sweden.
The interest for the 9-5NG has been growing steadily since and the cars are now rapidly becoming collector’s items. With the increasing popularity, the demand for detailed production data has also grown, but the demise of Saab Automobile AB unfortunately made access to reliable information quite difficult.